REVIEWSetc.

During the Sengoku period of Japan, Lord Murashige (Masahiro Motoki) finds himself trapped inside his own castle as his enemies close in around him. With his forces surrounded and his chances of survival becoming increasingly slim, Murashige turns to an unlikely source for help: a prisoner named Kanbei Kuroda (Masaki Suda), a brilliant strategist who has been captured and imprisoned within the castle. Despite being his captive, Kanbei possesses an understanding of war that co

Bryan Bruton lands in prison after an unfortunate accident, where he discovers that through hard work, he can find a way to escape. This happened in real life, and Bruton does a great job serving as a biopic that gives us the full scale of the story. Prison break stories can feel a little been there done that, but being a true story adds a level of intrigue that still makes the story exciting. The film does a good job with the set up, letting us get an inside look at who Brya

"I ain't afraid to die anymore. I've done it already." With the lead up to Alejandro González Iñárritu's newest film, Digger, coming this Fall, I figured it was time to take a walk down memory lane to his highest-grossing film of his career, The Revenant. At the time, the Oscar-winning filmmaker was coming off the heels of making his Best Picture winner, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), and decided it was time to tackle one of his most ambitious films he ever

We are back for the final instalment of the Heartstopper series. Based on the graphic novel series by Alice Oseman, Heartstopper has been loved around the world for celebrating the LGBTQ+ community. With three seasons, Netflix decided to close out one of its beloved series with a two-hour film rather than giving it a fourth and final season. In Heartstopper Forever, we are reunited with Charlie (Joe Locke), Nick (Kit Connor), and all of their friends for one last adventure. A

A small fishing village is in quite a slump. Thirty years ago, their livelihood depended on a fishing vessel called Rose of Nevada, and a storm took out the ship and its crew. One morning, the ship mysteriously returns into the harbor. Local businessman and owner of the boat Mike (Edward Rowe) is stunned, but sees this as an opportunity. Nick (George MacKay) is a husband and father, struggling to make ends meet. While trying to fix the roof of his home, it collapses in on him

Hayley Kiyoko has spent eleven years being called Lesbian Jesus by a generation of women who found themselves in a four minute music video, and Girls Like Girls the feature film is, more than anything, an act of devotion to those people. It is a love letter to a fandom rather than a fully realized film, and once you understand that, almost everything about it makes sense. The bones of the original video are all here. Sun soaked Oregon, a yellow bike with butterfly handles, sh

The highly acclaimed FX series The Bear returned to fans' screens on Thursday night, heightening anticipation for its final season. In the series' tradition, all eight episodes were dropped for binge-watching. Straying from the series organic flow of travelling to new food scenes across Chicago and the globe, season 5 boldly chooses to take on its own rendition of a chamber piece. Rather than travelling outside of the restaurant, the majority of the season takes place either

There is a scene in Tell Me Everything where a twelve-year-old boy sees just enough of something in a public bathroom to understand that his entire world is about to change, and Moshe Rosenthal shoots it with such precise, suffocating restraint that you feel the moment land in your chest before you have even fully processed what happened. This is a film that knows exactly where to look and exactly when to look away, and that discipline is everywhere. The setup is deceptively

Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov) is a down-on-his-luck mechanic living in a small seaside town in Russia. He lives with his second wife, Lilya (Elena Lyadova); and his son Romka (Sergey Pokhodaev). The town's corrupt Mayor Vadim (Roman Madyanov) is plotting to seize the beautiful land where Kolya's house sits. The town plans to reimburse him far less than what he is owed, and he calls his old friend Dmitry (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), who has found great success as a lawyer in Moscow,

Nothing makes me feel more pretentious and pseudo-artsy-fartsy than a thought I had earlier today: I have really eclectic taste in movies. Now, do I think most everyone has an eclectic taste in film, whether they realize it to not? Yes, I really do. So I don't think I'm too darned special in this regard. But still... it's good to know that I can get my cinematic jollies from many different kinds of flicks. It's no secret whatsoever that even now, when so many other folks are

Sasha (Eylul Guven, Amy Zimmer) is the child of Hungarian immigrants being raised on Vancouver Island. Blue Heron cuts back and forth between her youth in Canada, and her young adult years. It truly is a personal, restless look at trying to interpret your own childhood. This film very literally tackles the dissonance between your experience growing up, and how you then look back on it as a young adult. Although Sasha is the protagonist, Blue Heron is incredibly centered aroun

For twenty years, The Devil Wears Prada has been an essential piece of media for anyone wishing to start a career in the fashion industry. The dream of working for a publication is one any girl would kill for. However, for Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), it is her desperate, final attempt to work for a reputable publication after graduating from Northwestern University. A journalism major, Andy looks down on Runway and those in the fashion industry for being frivolous and not bei

There are certain pop rock songs that you pretend you don't know. John Carney has built a career out of making people like you feel okay about liking those songs. He has done just that with Power Ballad, his first feature in almost 20 years. The film caught me by surprise on an otherwise unimportant day. In the film, Paul Rudd plays the titular character who is a wedding singer in Ireland. He had the potential to make it big in the pop music world. He missed the chance, made

I am going to tell you something and I need you to stay with me. There is a film on Netflix right now in which a CGI octopus named Marcellus narrates the emotional healing journey of a grieving widow and I watched every single minute of it with my whole chest open like an idiot. Alfred Molina voices the octopus. He is wry. He is world weary. He has opinions. I respected him enormously. The crying is entirely Sally Field's fault. She plays Tova, a woman who has lost her husban

Andy (Anne Hathaway) is back at Runway. After 20 years as an award winning journalist elsewhere, she's laid off when her company cuts its journalism budget. Miranda (Meryl Streep) is still running the show, but a lot has changed. The Devil Wears Prada 2 addresses traditional news media, how it's been affected over time, and the trajectory they are anticipating. The passion exists but the resources are limited. If you liked the humor in the first movie, you will most likely co

Messy, lost and broke are three ways to sum up being in your twenties. It's a time of confusion as you graduate from being a kid into young adulthood, forcing you to snap out of this carefree nature. Everywhere you look, it seems everyone has it together, and you are falling apart. This is how we meet Grace (Barbie Ferreira), living with her parents, unemployed, but determined to prove everyone wrong. A music critic with over 400 articles written at Spin Magazine, Grace is l

Let me tell you about Rob. Rob ( Will Madden) is the kind of guy who plans things. He books restaurants in advance. He reads the reviews. He wanted to propose in Paris, which tells you everything you need to know about Rob: he is a good man, a careful man, a man who believes that love deserves a proper setting. He has a ring. He has a speech, probably. He had a whole vision of how the story was supposed to go. What Rob didn't have was a girlfriend who was anywhere near the s

Reef Hawk (Keanu Reeves) has been riding the high of being in Hollywood's good graces since the age of six. Forty years later and he's still on top of the world. He's won two Oscars and has starred in three of the biggest franchises in film history. But what is most important for Reef is that his fans still love him. Throughout his entire career, he's always been very careful in constructing his public image. Sure, he's had his share of struggles, but he's managed to keep it

Lately, I've been on a binge to watch/rewatch the more recent Best Picture-nominated films that went home with nothing on Oscar night. I've even made some articles on what may have happened to them over on my Substack account. Since I had a copy of War Horse hiding away in my endless DVD collection, I figured it was time to open this bad boy out and see what I thought of it. Unfortunately, War Horse falls right into the same problems I've been having with Steven Spielberg fro

Despite its good reviews and word of mouth, I had missed Bart Layton's Crime 101 when it was in theaters earlier this year. It's not alone; it was simultaneously at the cinema with Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die , and I never made it out those few weeks to see that, either. My loss, I suppose, but at least it did not take long for the former flick to hit Hulu for streaming purposes. (As of this writing, the latter picture is only available as a rental, and it's still $20 just